The Scribbler: Prepping for NaNo

I decided to retire Word Count Wednesdays because I don't often bother to post it.
I still like talking about writing, though, and decided to merge WCW into The Scribbler,
which can be for any writing topics I wish to talk about.

I don't do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the way many authors do.  I don't care about getting to 50,000 words.  I'm not going to give my characters 3-4 names and call them by each one every time they skip across the page to get a word count.  I'm not going to write words or scenes I don't intend to keep just to get a word count.  I'm a very careful writer, and, in part, that's why it always takes me so long to write.  I want things to be "right" the first time, so there's less of an overhaul during revisions (though it doesn't always work, lol!). 

As long-time blog readers know, I've been picking up and putting down Super Secret Project Fizzypop since last February.  I  keep quitting and starting again, then bemoaning the lack of fantasy in what I'm doing.

And I'm sick of that.  If I think I want to do fantasy, I'm going to take a break and use NaNo to get a foundation in a fantasy idea I've had for a few months.  I wasn't touching it, since I promised myself that I would finish Fizzypop before I did anything new.  And then I said that I would at least get a draft of it done by November 1st so I could do whatever I want.  Then, of course, life got in the way, and the last couple of months have been sort of hellish, so that didn't happen.  But I'm going to try something new anyway!

I've had three ideas fighting to be let out lately.  Two are YA Fantasy and one is MG Contemporary (I know, right?  I never envisioned going that route either!). 

I made a sheet of percentages to get my head around where I am idea-wise for each one:

Sorry, I was using shorthand, so nothing makes sense on there to anyone but me, lol!  The numbers are percentages.  I is the MG Contemporary idea while II and III are the two YA Fantasy ideas.  III is actually a brand-new idea, less than a month old.  While laying out percentages in Foundation, Character Development, Setting, Climax, andn Motivation, lead me to believe I'm closest to being able to write I from beginning to end, I REALLY want to take a break from contemporary.

I had breakthroughs on both I and II within the past week, I from something on the news, and II from something else I was putting together.  I'm far enough along in the foundation of II now that I'm hoping it's finally time.  I've been dying to write this since the spring, but had so much world-building to do!

I'm still not 100% sure if I'm making the right decision and may switch back again during NaNo, but for now, I think I'm focusing on my high fantasy idea!

Stay tuned next week to see where I go from here! ^.~